This invention relates to a technique for enabling the parties to a telephone call to exchange multimedia information during the call.
There exists a trend in telephony towards multimedia communication among the parties to a telephone call to allow the parties to exchange not only voice, but text and video as well. Telecommunications carriers, such as ATandT, currently support standards, such as the H.323 standard promulgated by the International Telecommunications Union, that are directed to the exchange of multimedia information among the parties to a telephone call. Unfortunately, much work remains to actually implement communications services that support such proposed standards.
Thus, there is a need for a simple solution that readily permits the parties to a telephone call to share multimedia information.
Briefly, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for enabling the parties to a telephone call to exchange multimedia information. The method commences upon receipt in a telecommunications network of a telephone call launched by a calling party to at least one called party. In response to the call, there is established at least one Universal Resource Locator that identifies multimedia information for at least one of the parties to the call. For example, the network could establish the URL for each of the calling and called parties by querying one or more databases in response to the receipt of the number of the calling party and the dialed number of the called party, respectively. The URLs of the calling and called parties obtained from the network database are forwarded to the called and calling parties, respectively, in a caller Identification (ID) message sent to each party. Rather than query a network database, the calling and/or called parties could provide URLs to each other directly. For example, in the event the called party comprises a conference bridge employed in connection with conference call services, a call from a calling party received at the bridge would trigger a query to a database connected to the bridge to obtain a URL associated with a specific conference call. In the case of an Internet Protocol (IP) telephone call, the calling party launching the call may include an associated URL in the signaling message transmitted to the called party to establish the IP call. In turn, the called party could include an associated URL in the signaling message sent in response to signaling sent by the calling party. Each party receiving a URL from the other would then retrieve the multimedia information corresponding to the URL. The retrieved multimedia information is presented to the party, by way or audio reproduction for audio information, and by a video display for video or text information.